up the yangtze

"Up the Yangtze" is a documentary film by Yung Chang, a young Chinese-Canadian director. The movie is about life in modern China in the Yangtze area. It mainly follows two characters, as they begin to work on board of a luxury cruise ship: a young, 16-year old girl, who comes from a modest family in a rural area and a young boy from a middle-class urban environment.

There are scenes that move the viewer by their cinematographic beauty, others are powerful due to the authenticity of the performances (my favrouites were: the prayer of the old lady, the father carrying the heavy closet up the hill, the young girl trying to proudly hold back her tears when her parents visit her on the ship). The luxury cruise ships were an opportunity for people to say goodbye to it, as it was slowly dissapearing as a consequence of the construction of the Three Gorges dam.

The Yangtze area has been subjected to immense change over the last years, due to the controversial Three Gorges dam project, the largest hydroelectric dam in the world. Its construction was not only extremely expensive, but it was aggressive and its necessity has been contested by many. The finalization of the project involved large transformations of the area, destruction and the relocation of over 2 million people.

To learn more about the film maker's inspiration, read this Q&A and/or watch this short interview.

Watch the trailer here:

I also recommend:

• having a look at Muge's photography, as he tried to document the changes along the Yangtze due to the dam project;
• reading "River Town", by Peter Hessler, who in 1996 had spent 2 years in Fuling, a small town on the Yangtze, and worked as an English Literature teacher. He delivers an extremely enjoyable and genuine portrait of the people and land of the famous Three Gorges area.